Pursued - Chapter 4

Pursued – Chapter Four

“Somehow, I expected more,” Keening said, looking disappointedly at the contents of Eradication’s dimly lit room from the open door.

“How so?” Eradication asks, not bothering to stop her energetic search for an elusive item someplace in the disarray. As she completely tosses her room from one end to the other, her personal possessions begin piling up in the middle of the floor.

“I don’t know,” Keening answers. “I guess I pictured The Batcave or The Tardis or some shit. But this is just kind of… normal.”

“And gross,” Hellbound adds, wrinkling her nose as she peaks around Keening through the doorway.

“I still can’t believe you had Pandemic tagged. And what, exactly are you looking for?” Desolation asks, stepping next to Hellbound to peer into the room over Keening’s shoulder.

“It’s a thingy,” Eradication answers, tossing some shorts over her shoulder as she continues digging.

“Spare me the technical description,” Desolation says, her words dipped in a heavy coating of sarcasm.

“Fuck off and help me!” Eradication snaps, turning on the three standing in her doorway. She maintains her usual calm exterior, but the urgency in her eyes and causes Desolation to push past the other two and step into the bedroom.

“What exactly, are we looking for?” Desolation asks, pawing through a pile of laundry and shaking out each article, one at a time.

“It’s small, black and looks like a smart phone,” Eradications replies, setting her hands on her hips as she scans her room for someplace she hasn’t already looked.

“So, it’s a cell phone,” Keening says, joining the two in the room and searching one of the higher shelves on the wall.

“No,” Eradication says, jerking open her top dresser drawer. “I said it looks like a fucking cell phone.”

“Then what is it?” Hellbound asks, remaining in the doorway.

“It’s a fucking thingy,” Eradication shouts, slamming the drawer closed and glaring at Desolation, daring her to make a smartass remark. “A mother fucking tracking thingy!”

“Oh…” the other three semi-demigods reply, nodding in unison.

“Well, where is it?” Desolation asks, lifting the corner of the mattress.

“I don’t know!” Eradication roars, flipping the mattress out of Desolation’s grip and sending it slamming up against the wall to expose the box-springs beneath it. “It’s not fucking here!” she yells, as she runs her hands over the box-springs like the tracking device is somehow hiding in the off-white material.

“When did you last see it?” Hellbound asks, folding an oversized tee-shirt with a picture of an old woman with no teeth, flipping the bird on it.

“When I put it in my desk,” Eradication replies, pointing to the small desk. The drawers have all been pulled out and dumped onto the top, the empty shells tossed to the side. “And it’s not fucking there!” she shouts as Keening picks up each drawer and shakes them before inspecting the inside.

“Are you sure,” Hellbound asks, dropping the folded shirt on the floor and absently sniffing her fingers.

“Well, not now!” Eradication says. She glances into the lampshade on her nightstands before checking underneath it as Keening and Desolation begin sifting through the items piled on the floor, making sure the gizmo isn’t hiding in them. Eradication scans her room for another place to search again as Hellbound walks out of the bedroom. “Where are you going?” Eradication asks her.

“To find your thingy,” Hellbound tells her without breaking stride.

“You know where it is?” Eradication asks hopefully, following Hellbound into the living room.

“Then you must not have a clue because you’ve put your ass on the table for some pretty stupid shit,” she says.

“Yeah,” Hellbound agrees. “But I ended up winning in the end,” she says slyly as she opens Pandemic’s door.

“In her end is more like it,” Keening says quietly to Desolation as Hellbound disappears into the room.

Pandemic’s floor is littered with empty an assortment of shoes and PEZ wrappers. The majority of the brightly colored papers aren’t crumpled, but lay open like discarded husks. Many of the plastic dispensers are scattered and broken with their tiny, cartoon heads snapped off and tossed among the wrappers for added color. Scanning the room, her eyes are instantly drawn to the small table next to the bed. Amongst the half-dozen beverage containers and cups, she spots a black, rectangular object turned face down in the table. On the back of it is a round sticker with the word “FACK” and a crudely drawn sheep below it. “I think I found it!” she shouts as she picks up the tracker and heads out of the room. “Is this it?” Hellbound asks, handing the small electric device to Eradication.

“That bitch!” Eradications says, taking it from Hellbound. She inspects it for damage, noting the new sticker on the back, forcing a brief smile. The other three huddle around her as Eradication pushes the power button on the side and they wait for the tracker to come to life.

“Shut the fuck up!” Eradication says, silencing the two. “I had us all implanted with a tiny transmitter just in case something like this happened.”

“You knew this would happen?” Desolation asks in her accusatory tone.

“I knew it was a possibility.”

“I still appreciate the appointment any way,” Hellbound says, giving an involuntary shiver.

“Slut,” Keening says.

“Shrew,” Hellbound replies.

“Whatever,” Eradication says, refocusing the team’s attention back to the tracking device. “This is you…us,” she continues, pointing to the dots. Using her thumb and index finger, she pinches them closer two times, and zooms out on the image on the touchscreen. On the third flick of her fingers, another tiny dot appears in the corner of the display. “Gotcha!” Eradication says, her words taking a low predatory tone.

The official trailer for Passionflix's The Matchmaker's Playbook is here!

The Matchmaker's Playbook, tadapted from the book written by #1New York Times bestselling author Rachel Van Dyken, starring Nick Bateman, Caitlin Carver and Tyler Johnson and directed by Tosca Musk, premieres on Passionflix March 15th!